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MOTLEY 



BY 



C.» F. HUSTON MILLER 




BOSTON 

RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 



Copyright, 1921, by C. P. Huston Miller 



All Rights Reserred 









f^ 



MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
Thb Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 

\2 \ri\ 



0)C!,A608944 



To 

THE AUTHOR OF "a SCENT OF EASTERN SANDAL 
wood" and "in automobile along THE 

italian battle front" 
My Mother 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

To the Prussian, Superman 9 

The Mater 1 1 

To Gertrude 13 

To Adair 14 

A Bit of Painted Cardboard 15 

Jimmy Blake 24 

A Case in Point 36 



MOTLEY 



TO THE PRUSSIAN, SUPERMAN 

Ye who have dragged the Beauty of the world 

through the hellish foulness of your minds, 
Who have tarnished the lustre which a man was 

wont to call his soul's, 
Have besmirched the honour of the written word, 

tottered the soaring arch and shivered the 

sunset of the stained pane. 
Have gashed, torn and sullied the living flesh of 

God; 

Know, that though your hideous triumphs have 
resounded through your reeking streets, 

And though, Superman — Sub-he^st that is, your 
Prussian minds have revelled in the blood of 
half a world, 

The true Soul of that world still lives! 

And though, to-day, your dripping hands may 
point with pride toward your ghastly handi- 
work of hell 

And your twisted lips may spit upon the Flower 
of a World's great sacrifice ; 



lo MOTLEY 

For every lover of the Beautiful, the Good, with 

face ground into grimace by your heel of 

hate 
There stands in rear another, nay, more than one, 

who loving all that ye, yourselves, abhor 
Will fill the ranks and wage this fight for those 

whom you have done to death, 
For Beauty, Truth, the Right — ay, all that ye, 

sub-bestial as ye are. 
Deem contemptible, and weak. 

Written for and dedicated to my Wife, Ger- 
trude Louise Miller, upon the occasion of her 
birthday, April thirtieth, 191 8, which day we 
spent together in Columbus, Ohio. 

c. F. H. M. 



THE MATER 

All white, she came this afternoon to cheer the 

dull, bed-ridden hours 
And cool the humid, sultry day. 
All white she was, but whitest of all her hair. 

i 
A brave woman, of such pluck to bear her undue 

share of trial as in another I have never seen, 
And, withal, so tireless in her generous zeal by 
thought and deed to succour the world's un- 
fortunates. 

God loving, not God fearing she, her living shaped 

by choice and bright ideals. 
Part of the soul, not of the mind alone. 
All this despite a body wearied and care worn by 

years of trial recurrent. 

A wonderful woman! Having, herself, a genius 
for doing all things excellently well. 

She yet has patience infinite for others' blunder- 
ings, or worse. 



II 



12 MOTLEY 

All this is she and more, my Mother; and so it 

seems to me 
This whiteness 'round about her is most natural, 

her attribute. 

No need to hark for loveliness and charm to 

younger days gone by, 
I thought, while looking on the dear, sweet face; 
For there are lines about the eyes and mouth 
As beautiful as any silken smoothness, 
Lines of a sweetness by care intensified, not dim- 
med. 

U. S. Army Base Hospital, Camp Greene, 
Charlotte, N. C, July 22, 191 8. 



TO GERTRUDE 

Dear girl ! there's that about you and your love- 
liness 

Which mocks the pen's poor powers. 

What use to tell of hair, or eyes, or mouth, or 
form. 

Less charming only than the Soul whose outward 
appanage they are? 

This much only will I say : 

A bonnie girl you are, my dear. 

And bonnier growing to my eyes each day; 

A Song forever in my heart. 

Small wonder, then, that I am what 

I proudly here confess myself to be — 

Not for to-day alone, nor to-morrow, 

Nor a year or two . . . for life ! — 

That passing strange phenomenon, 

A man quite hopelessly in love 

With some sweet girl ... his wife. 



13 



TO ADAIR 

Floating in a sky of perfect azure, 
Ethereally translucent to the bright sun's rays, 
A cloud, a veritable Golden Fleece! . . . and 
stillness. 

A sudden breath of God-sent wind, 
And, in the blueness swimming free, a tiny cloud- 
let separates; 
Glowing in the same sun's beams. 
The same fair form in miniature. 

Adair ! 'twas thus you came ; 
An added thing of grace and light 
To deck the golden, blue high-noon — 
The High-noon of my happiness. 



14 



A BIT OF PAINTED CARDBOARD 

LIKE books and music, pictures are valuable 
to any one only in proportion to how much 
they mean to him. What we get out of each is al- 
most wholly dependent upon what we are able to 
put into them. An infinity of trains of thought 
may be suggested, but not everyone will discover 
the suggestion; many will in all probability find 
little or nothing beyond a certain arrangement of 
words, of sound, or of colour. This may or may 
not be due to lack of taste, there are other ele- 
ments entering into the case such as: degree of 
familiarity and sympathy with the theme, inabil- 
ity to understand the author's purpose, accidental 
state of mind, and other causes leading to mis- 
understanding. It may well be, therefore, that 
this little picture which hangs to the left of my 
mantle-piece would appear to you rather common- 
place and uninteresting. To me it is neither, how- 
ever, because I have associations connected with 
its subject, am familiar with the scene which it 
depicts, and appreciate the truth with which it is 
reproduced. 

A small painting in what is known as Vash,' 
oblong in form and enclosed by a plain black 
frame, it is the essence of modesty. For all that, 

15 



I 6 MOTLEY 

it is a very pretty little picture — you would grant 
this much I am sure, however little you might 
consider it worthy of the notice here bestowed up- 
on it. 

But let me describe it for you, briefly. It rep- 
resents sunset in the Highlands of Scotland. You 
are looking along an unenclosed road, which nar- 
rows with distance as it stretches away to the crest 
of a low ridge, and there vanishes; a high, round- 
ed hill flanked by lower ones lies beyond, closing 
the prospect with a sharp, undulating line. Low 
round-towers crown the highest and one of the 
lesser hills. The horizon line is distinct, meeting 
firmly with the crimson band of sky which, streak- 
ed here and there with greyish, slightly luminous 
sunset clouds, shades first into a red, then to an 
orange, from this to a yellow, and finally into a 
faintly greenish expanse. At the base of the blu- 
ish hills rises the soft grey mist which always 
appears on these moors when the sun goes down. 
In the foreground, on either side of the rutted 
road which lies and tends slightly to the right of 
the picture, stretches the heath, royal purple with 
the blossoming heather. The heather, the haze, 
the glowing sky — all seem done with a fairy 
brush; a brush which paints not a picture, but 
reality. 

Another, unfamiliar with the scene, would fail 
entirely to appreciate this truth and charm of 



A BIT OF PAINTED CARDBOARD 17 

portrayal, to him it would be merely a picture 
like any other — and a very small one too. To 
me, however, this is no common picture, no or- 
dinary bit of bedaubed cardboard; it is an ob- 
long opening in my wall, through which I look 
upon the Scottish moors far away. That road, 
those hills, and that sky are no mere phantoms; 
that road I have trodden, I have ranged those 
hills, and that glorious sky — I have seen it ! 

When my eye chances to rest upon this little 
scene it is sunset, and I am wandering along a 
desolate road in the Highlands. The walls of 
the room and the rumble and rattle of the out- 
side world fade away; I see only the gold and 
the purple; the odour of moist heather is about 
me, and I hear no sound save the rhythmical 
beat of my footsteps as I walk on toward the 
fiery curtain in the northwest. The glamour 
bathes me, I feel its warmth upon my face 
and in my lungs. When the last flush has 
fled, to leave me under the cold sheen of the stars 
— time enough then to face about and retrace my 
steps ; but now, I must on into the glow. 

If you journey from Aberdeen up the banks of 
the Dee and alight at a certain little hamlet com- 
posed of an inn and some dozen cottages, you 
will find just such a road as this. Walk down it 
in the gloaming and you will never forget it. 

It was on a Sunday evening some years ago that 



1 8 MOTLEY 

I travelled this road with a friend. We had 
spent the day in tramping; our church had been 
the wind-swept summit of the highest of the 
neighbouring hills, where Nature — that most in- 
spiring of ministers — preached to us a sermon of 
no common kind, and our afternoon pipes were 
smoked as we sauntered across the heath. But 
there can be no such thing as fatigue when one is 
breathing the air of the Highlands, and evening 
found us once more upon our feet. We walked 
along the deserted road, our blood surging and 
our cheeks tingling from the cool of a northern 
evening. On either hand swept a motionless sea 
of purple; not a fence, hedgerow or wall to break 
its surface with a hard, disillusioning line. Farth- 
er off the hills, standing knee-deep in mist like the 
herd in an autumn meadow, seemed to mark the 
utmost boundary of the earth. It was as though 
we were moving in another and better world; 
the cities with their noise and dirt' and misery — 
how far away they were, how unreal I 

Once, a man met us and, stopping, asked for 
a match; he passed on, his pipe all aglow, and 
we were left alone once more in this enchanted 
land. Off to the right, at the foot of a rocky 
knoll, the yellow eye of a lonely cottage blinked at 
us fitfully, the only sign of human life in all this 
world of gold and purple. We spoke but little; 
It was not the time for conversation. 



A BIT OF PAINTED CARDBOARD 19 

Hazlitt in one of his essays violently abjures 
all companionship when tramping, and Stevenson 
endorses this view with almost equal emphasis. 
The gist of their argument is that one cannot 
draw close to Nature — commune with her — when 
harrassed by the pestering conversation of a road 
comrade. This proposition as it stands is of 
course unassailable, and yet, myself, I cannot 
agree with them in renouncing all companionship 
on this account. There are men and men. Your 
every day dull fellow would by his prosaicness and 
lack of appreciation, very naturally set your teeth 
on edge ; you must choose your man well, and up- 
on your choice will depend the truth or falsity of 
this doctrine of the advisability for solitude in 
walking. Pleasant as solitary walks are, they are 
not more agreeable than those taken in the com- 
pany of a congenial friend, one whose intuition is 
sufficiently fine to enable him to distinguish be- 
tween the proper and improper time for conversa- 
tion. Here is an added pleasure, that of silent 
accord — unspoken agreement; Nature speaks to 
him even as she speaks to you, you are insensibly 
drawn into close sympathy with one another by 
the bond of your common appreciation, and, each 
participating in the other's pleasure, the enjoy- 
ment of each is twofold. Yes, assuredly, it is bet- 
ter to walk with a 'pal' than alone. 

The heather and gorse lay on the hillsides in 



20 MOTLEY 

roughly rectangular patches of colour, and I won- 
dered idly if it could have been this effect which 
first gave to the Highlander the idea for his Tar- 
tan. What a land it is, drear and sullen, and 
yet — how beautiful ! No man on earth loves his 
native soil as the Scotsman loves those misty hills. 
. . . A breath of wind scurried by, bringing 
with it the sound of a faraway bagpipe ; it lasted 
but an instant, the puff hurried on and once more 
it was still as death all about us. How the pipes 
have screamed, how the claymore has flashed 
over this gory carpet ! Scotland is indeed a land 
of men; rugged and stout as her sea-girt cliffs, 
yet tender as her desolate moors, the Scot is a true 
man of the North. A man of iron yet a man of 
heart, fiercely masculine to his very core — yet in 
all his being a poet. Right proud and right true, 
then, is the legend which Caledonia bears on her 
shield: Nemo Me Impune Lace&sit. 

Greener and greener grew the sky ahead; the 
red had turned to pink, the orange had gone, and 
the dark blue vault of night was fast encroaching 
upon it all. A chill blast struck us in the face, 
the first breath of oncoming darkness. We stop- 
ped; once more the notes of the pipes came to 
us faintly across the heath, no longer those of 
a rollicking march however, it was the wail of a 
dirge that came to us now. We filled our lungs 
with that glorious air, laden with the scent of 



A BIT OF PAINTED CARDBOARD 21 

heather, before turning about and starting home- 
ward; and far on our way we were pursued 
through the gloom by the cry of the distant pipes, 
as they wept for Scotland's dead. 

All this comes back to me most vividly when I 
look on this little sketch ; I am transported back to 
that night years ago, and the sensations and emo- 
tions which I experienced then are experienced 
anew. True, the dream is a brief one; only a 
few moments and then this everyday world closes 
around me again — a disheartening anticlimax. 
But then, after all, the best moments of life are 
always fleeting, it could not be otherwise, no 
doubt, and these little journeys brief as they are 
mean quite as much to me, I know, as long hours 
passed in the humdrum of regular occupation. 
Nor are they less real perhaps; we are not neces- 
sarily farther from actuality, from general prin- 
ciples, when our thoughts are in the clouds than 
when they are clamped down to hard facts, so 
called. The telescope distorts no more than the 
microscope. 

I have spoken of this small picture as a window 
through which I see the place it portrays. This 
is the nature, the soul of pictures. Unless through 
them you look upon the very events, scenes or 
persons that they depict, they are of no real value 
to you. Apart from their artistic value pictures 
have the value of their symbolism, their signifi- 



22 MOTLEY 

cance; they themselves are merely images, but 
there lies or should He something beyond. A 
"work of art" (if the art be good) is valuable if 
only because of its art, but works of this kind are 
comparatively rare and quite beyond the reach of 
the many, what I have termed the significant type 
of picture, however, may be within reach of al- 
most all, and certainly it is more general in its 
appeal. The logman gets quite as much enjoy- 
ment from the magazine-supplement lithograph 
tacked on his shanty wall as any connoisseur from 
the Old Master hanging in his gallery. 

It is entirely a matter of scope, so whatever 
yours may be, Dear Reader, hang on your walls 
only that which you can understand and appre- 
ciate, for your pictures are to be your compan- 
ions — day in and day out. Your room will then 
no longer be bounded by four solid walls, you will 
sit, as it were, in an observatory, with windows 
on every side giving upon another world. No 
doubt you have noticed how much more spacious a 
room appears after its blank walls have been hung 
with pictures ; similarly is the mind broadened by 
them. Pity the man who spends all his indoor life 
surrounded by bare walls — a room devoid of pic- 
tures or books is a cell, imprisoning mind as well 
as body. 

There are other pictures in my room whereby I 
am conjured into other times and places, but, just 



A BIT OF PAINTED CARDBOARD 23 

now, my eyes see only the oblong black frame 
with its bit of painted cardboard ... I 
must lay down my pen, for the sky is beginning 
to fade, and from afar I hear the pipes calling 
me out on the moor. 



JIMMY BLAKE 

A WHINING wind was tapping at the win- 
dow beside Jimmy's desk; It thrust Its icy 
fingers through the chinks and laid their clammy 
tips on the back of his neck until the little man, 
trying desperately to escape, pulled his stool far- 
ther back in the room. It was a little better now; 
the cold fingers still glided about his head, 
though, and Jimmy could not seem to stop shiver- 
ing for all that they were not quite so clammy as 
before. 

Day after day he had sat there on his rickety, 
long-legged stool, making up the work for the 
rolling-mill, while outside the dingy little office the 
engines shrieked as they ran past with their truck- 
loads of ingots, and the mills and shops roared 
forth a constant, monotonous chorus — even as 
they were doing now. He had sat bent over his 
grimy high desk for so many days and years that 
his work had become mere m.echanlcal repetition ; 
as for any interest in It — poor old Jimmy Blake 
had lost long since the little he had once had. 
And so, whenever he had made up all the work 
which was in sight, and there was nothing more 
to be done until the next batch came in, Jimmy 
would cross his arms on the desk before him and 

24 



JIMMY BLAKE 25 

lay his weazened little face on the back of his 
hands, . . . and in a very few moments the 
smoke and noise were forgotten, and Jimmy 
would dream of brooks and fields — and the 
might-have-been. 

For there were might-have-beens in Jimmy's 
life, that was the worst of it; he had had oppor- 
tunities years before, but had never made good. 
They had tried him at the Main Office, and once 
even sent him travelling for the firm; upon the 
latter occasion he had returned after three days, 
with only a very small part of his money gone 
and with one order for some half-dozen small hull 
plates. Then he had gone away once and tried 
his hand at a number of things, but always with 
the same result; and so, after seven months, no- 
body was greatly surprised when he reappeared 
and applied for his old job. He got it; they took 
him back more out of charity than for any other 
reason. No, Jimmy was not a success; he had 
muffed such few opportunities as he had had, and 
would have done the same with a dozen more, no 
doubt, if they had presented themselves. 

His failures had been too unspeakably lament- 
able, and for many years now he had felt himself 
to be a fixture at his desk; he knew that there 
was nothing ahead of him but to sit there and do 
the same thing over and over for the rest of his 
life. Even this he did but indifferently well, his 



26 MOTLEY 

mind was always wandering and he had too little 
confidence in himself. The trouble with Jimmy was 
that he was too timid — he was afraid to take a 
chance. His appeals for assistance to the other 
clerks in the room were never ending; yet he had 
been there, always at the same work, longer than 
any of them. It was really not surprising, then, 
that they should grow weary of these constant in- 
terruptions ; it seemed that Jimmy was never sure 
of himself; even when right he liked to have 
some one look over his work before he let it go 
from him. And his mistakes! At times his mill 
would be hopelessly at sea, the work as listed by 
Jimmy in maddening confusion . . . and 
then he would hear from them about it ! 

So Jimmy was a joke at the office— that was the 
long and the short of it — to be laughed at always, 
and not infrequently cursed at. The others had 
their work to do and did it; poor old Jimmy dod- 
dered about, racked his little grey head, annoyed 
everyone, was jeered at by all — and finally got his 
done, after a fashion. Although nobody took 
him at all seriously, they all felt that they must 
put up with him ; not one of them would have had 
the heart to throw him out — what would ever be- 
come of the poor old devil if they did? No, he 
was a fixture, and they knew it; so they growled 
and cursed, and Jimmy sat rabbit-like on his stool. 
He had grown more or less used to being their 



JIMMY BLAKE 27 

butt, and always took their gibes in the same 
frightened, scolded-dog way; but there were 
times when it hurt nevertheless. If they knew 
this, they did not seem to care — Jimmy ought to 
be thankful that they put up with him at all. 

"By G — , Jimmy's gettin' worse every day — 
asleep all the time now. Come on ; wake up, you 
old swab!" — Splicer stuck his pen into Jimmy's 
elbow — the bowed head bobbed up with a jerk 
and Jimmy looked across at his disturber with en- 
quiring, watery eyes. When he had recovered 
from his uproarious laughter, Splicer continued: 
"What the devil do you do at night, Jim — eh? 
Ye seem to take yer sleep in the daytime. Out 
raisin' hell, I suppose!" The entire staff roared 
its approval at this bit of wit. 

"Dear me, was I asleep?" Jimmy ran his 
crooked fingers through his sparse grey hair, then 
climbed down from his stool, picked up his pen 
which had rolled to the floor, and bending over 
the desk took up his work again. 

It was true, Jimmy's naps had grown more fre- 
quent of late. He tried to keep awake — tried his 
best, but it seemed as though he could not help 
falling asleep. A drowsiness so strong that to re- 
sist it occasioned actual suffering would creep over 
him; his head felt like lead, he could not think — 
and then all at once everything became black. 
When he had to go over to the mill and stand 



28 MOTLEY 

about in the icy draughts the cold sank through 
to his very bones ; for some time now he had had 
a bad cough which grew worse from day to day, 
and a pecuHar tightness about the chest increased 
with it. Then that weak heart of his was jump- 
ing and causing him to miss his breath oftener 
than of old — Jimmy was feehng worse these days 
than ever he had before. 

But he was game, and every day he tottered 
down to the smoke-ridden steel plant and work- 
ed and dozed until the whistle blew at six o'clock, 
when he tottered back to his cheerless lodging 
house, ate his never-changing supper and sat alone 
in his bare little room, reading by the flickering 
gas light until it was time to go to bed. And what 
do you suppose Jimmy read? 

Once, many years ago, when on a Saturday's 
visit to the city, he had picked up three or four 
old volumes outside a second-hand book shop ; the 
titles were good and he had been started along a 
path of real reading. His little library now num- 
bered an hundred-odd volumes, and Jimmy read 
Scott and Dickens and that sort of thing; he even 
got so far as Longfellow and Tennyson. When 
primed for his greatest, most serious flights, he 
would dig into his Shakespeare and his Bible. Of 
all his treasured books though, Jimmy valued 
most an old, battered translation of Les Miser- 
ahleSf and he blessed the chance which had led 



JIMMY BLAKE 29 

him to buy the set; when he bought it he had no 
idea beyond getting a great deal of reading mat- 
ter for a small outlay — the books looked so fat 
and inviting. But your nearest and dearest mean 
no more to you than Jean Valjean came to mean 
to Jimmy. 

So Jimmy's evenings were passed in another 
world. He took his reading seriously; when he 
read he viewed the play from the gallery, not 
from the pit — the type spelled reality to him. It 
was this world of his books which formed the 
background of his dreams during the day, and he 
looked forward to his evenings as the prisoner 
does to his hour in the prison-yard. 

When the whistle blew, some two hours after 
his rude awakening by Splicer, Jimmy hurried 
across the plant, and a moment later he was being 
swept out through the gateway by the dark, surg- 
ing stream of blackened humanity which poured 
into the street outside amid the clattering of din- 
ner-pails and a dull hum of many voices exchang- 
ing gruff jests and comment. That night Jimmy's 
whimsical fancy made of the straggling, pushing 
mob an orderly column ; the rattle of the dinner- 
pails became the clanking of accoutrements, the 
babel of voices — hoarse calls of command, and 
all the way down the street until he came to the 
corner and rounded it, leaving the main body of 
workmen to go on in another direction, the little 



30 MOTLEY 

man walked with his head thrown back and his 
shoulders squared — for he was marching to bat- 
tle .. . Jimmy Blake, Sir, of the Old 
Guard ! 

Once he had turned the corner, however, and 
was plodding up the muddy street alone, his 
dream faded — the pains in the chest returned, 
and he was just the old insignificant Jimmy, trudg- 
ing miserably homeward through the slush and the 
drizzle. As he was passing the garishly lighted 
doors of the "Opera House'* he glanced at the 
gaudy bill-boards, decorated with their customary 
groups of smirking women in the variegated 
tights of the burlesque world. Jimmy shook his 
head sadly at the string of men lined up before 
the box-office, among whom he recognized two of 
the clerks from "the staff." How could they spend 
their free hours in going to see that sort of thing, 
he wondered, when there were so many books in 
the world! And he quickened his step so as to 
get the sooner to his little room. 

A particularly bad twinge of pain in his chest 
sent him into the pharmacy at the corner of his 
street. He emerged a moment later with a bot- 
tle of Expectorant in his hand, and stumbled on 
down the ill-lighted side street, splashing his way 
through puddles and muck, to the door of his 
lodging house — number 543. What a dirty, 
smelly little hole it was ! Jimmy realized the fact 



JIMMY BLAKE 31 

with renewed Intensity that night, and a wave of 
self-pity swept over him. There was a large lump 
in his throat as he climbed the uneven steps, 
steadying himself by the shaky baluster. When 
he pushed open the door of his room and walked 
in he found It so cold that what with his trembling 
hand and chattering teeth he could scarcely light 
the gas. After washing at the Iron wash-stand in 
the corner and brushing his hair in front of the 
clouded mirror which hung above it, he went 
down-stairs for his supper, leaving the gas-jet 
turned partway on, so as to warm up the room a 
little. 

His supper made him feel somewhat better; 
the cup of hot, if bitter, coffee especlaly seemed to 
bring a comforting warmth to his marrow. But 
when he returned to his room he found the gas 
turned down to a pin's point; it felt very chilly 
there compared with the down-stairs part of the 
house. The landlady, Mrs. Boggs, was an ex- 
tremely economical person (she had to be, she 
said, "So's to make both ends meet at all") and 
she seemed to find that the best place in which 
to economize was that part of the house given up 
to the lodgers — which was no more than human 
nature, to be sure, when you come to think of it. 

Jimmy took a swallow of the Expectorant, and 
then got a book down from the rude board 
shelves above the table. His martial phantasy on 



32 MOTLEY 

the way back from work had suggested some- 
thing military for the evening's reading, so he 
chose one of the volumes of Les Miserables, and 
wrapping himself in a blanket from the bed, he 
sat down under the flickering gas-jet and turned 
to that wonderful description of the Battle of 
Waterloo. 

But he could not read, his heart and the pain in 
his chest would not allow him to. He was shiver- 
ing badly again and the type danced before his 
eyes, making his head swim. Laying the book 
aside, he drew the blanket closer about him and 
leaned back in the chair. For a time he studied 
the impossible pink flowers on the blotched and 
faded yellow wall-paper, and then his eyes wand- 
ered to his only picture, which hung over the bed- 
stead; it was a glaring lithograph representing 
Washington crossing the Delaware. Jimmy 
laughed an uneasy laugh when he found that look- 
ing at the bright blue cakes of ice made him shiver 
worse than ever. He picked up the book and 
tried again to read — it was no use, he simply 
could not do it. So he fell on his knees and pray- 
ed God that he might get better, that his reading 
— all that there was in life for him — might not 
be taken from him. Then he undressed and lay 
down in his bed, and although his head felt very 
hot and he breathed with difficulty, in time he 
fell asleep. 



JIMMY BLAKE 33 

He was at his desk as usual the next morning, 
but he had hardly been able to get there, he felt 
so badly. It was raining a dreary rain, outside in 
the smoke, and the work piled up on the desk in 
front of him was unusually heavy. "If only I 
could get away from it all," Jimmy thought, and 
he could hardly keep down a sob, "if only I could 
just sit and read 'till I died I" The hard lump 
was in his throat again, and the rims of his eyes 
were hot as he looked out through the sooty win- 
dow at the monstrous blast furnace with its clus- 
tering brood of stoves, the same ugly black fur- 
nace at which he had looked for so many years. 
He pulled himself together with an effort, and 
went at his work. But he could not seem to make 
any headway. . . . The morning passed and 
afternoon came. 

"Oh, damn it all, Jimmy; come on, you've got 
to get that done, you know. It's all very well 
your slackin' around here when there ain't much 
to do, but that work's got to go to the mill before 
five; so speed up, will you?" The "chief" was 
in earnest, and Jimmy struggled hopelessly on. 
Every minute he felt worse — an overpowering 
dizziness and lassitude was gradually taking pos- 
session of him. At last, about four o'clock, it 
grew so bad that the little man could stand it no 
longer — he took his swimming head in his hands, 



34 MOTLEY 

and then all at once that blackness swallowed him 
and he fell forward on the desk. 

It was some ten minutes later that Splicer, 
whose seat was directly opposite, looked up. 
There was Jimmy in his characteristic pose, and 
before him lay a good sized pile of work which 
must go to the mill at five o'clock, in time to make 
up the heats for the night shift. 

"Wake up, oh — wake upT' he shouted, "asleep 
at the switch again, you confounded old loafer — 
come on now, get at that — ye haven't got all night 
ye know!" The bowed figure showed no sign of 
life, so Splicer leaned across the desk and pour- 
ed half the contents of his ink-well over Jimmy's 
head, to the huge delight of "the staff." Still he 
made no move. When a hard crack on the 
knuckles with his ruler failed to arouse him, an 
uneasy look came into Splicer's face; he w^alked 
around the desk, lifted Jimmy's ink-bespattered 
head and turned his shrivelled face to the light. 
The great, black blast furnace was still there, out- 
side in the rain, but although his eyes looked 
straight at it through the grimy window pane, 
Jimmy did not see it — not this time. 

They have a bright young fellow in the office 
now; a worker, the sort of a lad you can't keep 
down. There is no sleeping done at Jimmy's 
place, Splicer does not need to prod across the 
desk. Office routine runs smoothly and the work 



JIMMY BLAKE 35 

Is done promptly and well, for "the staff" is no 
longer disturbed by interruptions from Jimmy's 
stool. 



A CASE IN POINT 

TT IS NOT often that four men, made travel- 
-■-ling companions by the merest chance, will 
form a really congenial group, a group in which 
each finds the other three interesting and enter- 
taining; and yet we four aboard the Iceland 
packet made up just such a little band. Perhaps 
I am flattering myself when I give you the im- 
pression that I interested the Doctor, Herr 
Kneipe, and the "globe-trotting" Baltimorean. 
Frankly, I think that I was more interested in 
each of them than any one of them was in me, 
nevertheless, I must say that I held my own suf- 
ficiently well to avoid being considered an intru- 
der. 

We were cosmopolitan. The Doctor was a 
Scot; he had studied his Medicine at St. An- 
drews, and while there — unlike many of his pro- 
fessional brothers — he had thought some other 
branches of knowledge worthy of his considera- 
tion ; by which I mean to imply that he was a doc- 
tor of the old school, the broad school, he was a 
man of parts. Herr Kneipe, who had come over 
from Copenhagen on the boat, was an instructor 
of Psychology in the University there; obviously 
then, a man of training and intellect. Fraser, as 

36 



A CASE IN POINT 3^ 

I have mentioned, came from Baltimore, Mary- 
land, and was by profession a seeker of new 
lands; he possessed a wealth of anecdote and his 
comment invariably showed the judicial poise to 
be expected from a man of his experience and 
early training in the Law. As for me, the most 
humble of the party, to be sure, I am by way of 
being a journalist, a member of the staff on one of 
the London daily papers. In journeying to Ice- 
land we none of us had any object beyond rest and 
recreation and, in consequence, we were all unus- 
ually genially inclined from the first. My being 
made a party to their smoking-saloon delibera- 
tions may have been due to this geniality of at- 
mosphere, I am sure that it was to a considerable 
extent, but I seemed to fit in fairly well too, large- 
ly, I take it, because I have read a little, have 
seen a little more perhaps, and am interested in 
almost any subject that comes along, whether it be 
railway spikes or Old English roots. 

The bond which had first drawn us together 
from among the dozen or so of men making up 
the ship's passenger-list and which kept us united 
throughout the passage from Leith to Reykjavik 
was a rather philosophical attitude toward things 
in general, an attitude common to all four of us. 
If you ask me if we were philosophers, I can only 
answer as did Mr. Pickwick when the same ques- 
tion was put to him by Jingle : we were **Observ- 



38 MOTLEY 

er5 of human nature, Sir." Before we had put a 
day's run into our wake we had, by a process of 
natural selection, found one another out, and 
thereafter we were almost constantly together. 
We had our particular table in the smoke-room, 
where we would sit by the hour, and on the decks 
we formed a little Peripatetic School of our own. 

^'That's a broad subject — fatalism," observed 
Kneipe as he deliberately knocked the ashes from 
his uncouth Danish pipe, and then he added slow- 
ly and with due scholarly caution: — ''It would 
seem, though, that the doctrine may well be ac- 
cepted, . . . with certain limitations." 

''To what sort of limitations do you refer, 
sir?" enquired the Doctor. 

We were seated in our accustomed corner of 
the smoking-saloon, after dinner, on the evening 
of our third day out. Foreseeing a discussion, pos- 
sibly protracted and, judging by the subject mat- 
ter, almost certain to prove worthy of uninter- 
rupted attention, I seized this opportunity to call 
to the steward to take away the coffee cups and 
bring in the glasses and beer. When this had been 
done and we were once more left to ourselves, the 
Professor, who had sat in deep meditation the 
while, cleared his throat and answered the Doc- 
tor's question. 

"It is not a perfectly easy matter to answer 
such a question in a few words — I am sure that 



A CASE IN POINT 39 

you understand that, my dear Doctor; but, 
roughly, this is what I mean: Fatalism proper, 
the fatalism of the Oriental and, in a sense, of the 
old-school Calvinist too — your pardon, sir! — im- 
plies that the individual is really nothing more 
than a puppet. The gods have laid down the 
course, and man can only follow his destiny blind- 
ly and passively — he is not a free agent, and Che 
sard sard. This is the doctrine as it stands. Per- 
sonally I cannot accept it in this form — Western 
civilization in general does not. To do so is to 
dry up the very well spring of our Occidental con- 
ception of Life and its meaning. However — and 
this is the limitation of the philosophy to which 
I referred a moment ago — we do very generally 
accept it in a modified form; with us it is not so 
much an individual as it is a racial, a world-fa- 
talism. In short, we believe in Evolution." The 
Professor leaned back in his corner and eyed us 
expectantly, one after the other, through his steel 
rimmed spectacles. 

*'I see your point," the Doctor said after a 
moment's reflection, 

*There is a Divinity that shapes our ends 
Rough hew them as we may.* 

" — but doesn't it go a little farther than that, 
isn't there something beyond this general law of 



40 MOTLEY 

cause and effect? What I am getting at is this: 
are there not combinations of circumstance which 
so to speak tie a man's hands, and lead him un- 
avoidably to a particular action or condition? 
Combinations of circumstance which do not bear 
any direct relation to anything going before, and 
therefore not to be considered as evolutionary. If 
such conditions do arise, and I am sure that you 
will all agree that they do, unless you call them 
simply accidental, a mere matter of luck, you must 
attribute them to the inevitable — to Fate. Am 
I right? . . . No; I am inclined to believe 
that there is such a thing as fatality, and that it 
reaches us in our lives as individuals." 

"Isn't it Taine," said I, "who says that a man 
is the resultant of three things — his race, his sur- 
roundings and the spirit of the times in which he 
lives. Of course that is the 'fatalism of evolu- 
tion' to which Herr Kneipe referred; even that 
doesn't seem to leave a man much leeway, does 
it? But as I understand it. Doctor, you are al- 
luding to something other than this again, a fore- 
ordination of events, quite separate from the 
make-up of the man himself. Is that the idea?" 

"That is it exactly, sir." 

"Excuse me for putting in my oar," Fraser said 
as he turned toward me, "it's not a vital point at 
all and in no way affects the broader application 
of the principle, but I think, Mr. Hall, that Taine 



A CASE IN POINT 41 

offered that doctrine as a working basis for liter- 
ary criticism. His idea was, as I recall it, that 
an author's work reflected these influences, and 
that they should be taken into consideration in 
judging of it. Pardon me for taking you up." 

"Of course — I had forgotten that he limited it 
in that way; but after all, as you say, what would 
be true of his writing would be true of the man 
himself." No one seemed inclined to dispute this, 
so I concluded that my remark had not been badly 
scotched after all. 

Fraser spoke again: 

"There's a great deal of truth in that view of 
course, beyond a doubt there is, but I can't help 
feeling that something underlies all that in a 
man — there is something deeper. Every man, I 
think, possesses a quality, indefinable and unre- 
lated to everything external, not to be accounted 
for by heredity, a quality which distinguishes him 
from all others — I mean personality. Of course 
I know some hold that personality itself is merely 
the result of moulding causes, but I do not. It 
lies deeper than that ; in a way we may call it the 
e^o, the manifestation of the individual soul." 

Herr Kneipe was beaming, — "Aha, now you 
have it!" he exclaimed delightedly. "Yes, yes — 
there is something underlying all outward mani- 
festations. Things in general, everything pos- 
sesses a substance, an actuality, which cannot be 



42 MOTLEY 

defined. This personality which you, Sir, have so 
well put before us does exist in Man, and through 
it he achieves a freedom which enables him to 
over-ride predisposition and environment. I have 
seen many such cases; I have met with them in 
my work." 

The Doctor sat twirling the ash-tray in his 
hand: 

"From what you have just said regarding Sub- 
stance, Professor, I infer that you are by way of 
being a transcendentalist," — he said with a smile. 

"I am, Sir — "Kneipe returned, overlapping the 
Doctor's last word in his eagerness, ''that is my 
School ... a thing is not the sum of its at- 
tributes — it is morel" 

"I am inclined to agree with the Professor and 
Mr. Fraser," I volunteered, "I believe in this 
'personality' or 'individuality.' Doubtless it is 
known beforehand what our life is to be, but we 
are fundamentally free agents — we have the 
shaping of it at the time. We are free to choose, 
I mean, and it hardly seems reasonable to lay 
all the responsibility for the result of free choice 
upon heredity, environment and that sort of 
thing. That's a dingy philosophy, that heredity- 
environment business; and you give us a dingier 
one still. Doctor, with your 'inevitable circum- 
stance' idea added on. A man pretty well makes 
the bed he lies in, I think I*' 



A CASE IN POINT 43 

The Doctor eyed me quizzically, "I seem to 
have the three of you about my ears," he laughed 
as he reached for his glass. Then, 

''Let me tell you a little story," he continued 
more seriously, "it is not altogether a pleasant 
story, but I think it bears on the subject under 
discussion. I used to feel very much as you do 
about this matter; that is to say I believed — as 
Mr. Hall has just put it, and very aptly too — 
that a man pretty well made the bed he had to lie 
in, and I might still but for my connection with 
this incident. 

"Whenever we read or hear indirectly of a case 
in which a man is apparently the victim of For- 
tune the tendency is always, I think, to look upon 
him with compassion mingled with a slight feeling 
of annoyance at his blindness — for so it appears 
to us who can stand off and view the matter from 
outside. Isn't this so? . . . Take Othello, 
for instance : we feel keenly for the man, we rec- 
ognize his nobility of character, and as the trag- 
edy draws toward its close we are appalled at the 
pity of It all. And yet, at the same time, we grow 
almost exasperated with the man — 'Why is he so 
stupid?' we ask; time and time again a situation 
presents itself in which a word from him would 
clear away the whole mesh of deception, but he 
flounders deeper and deeper Into the trap, and 
when at last he does speak it is too late — the 



44 MOTLEY 

strands have been pulled too tight. The author 
has masterfully sought to give an effect of inevi- 
tability to it all, but I think there is always a feel- 
ing on the part of the spectator that in real life 
the thing could not occur. The man would surely 
do something to break the bonds before they had 
become too close; we think that there is some- 
thing artificial about it — and we console ourselves 
with the thought that we at all events would not 
act so blindly under like circumstances, Do you 
get my point, am I right? . . . Well, then, 
this 'if which always appears very plain when we 
see someone else hemmed in by circumstances — 
if he had only done this or that, if he had not been 
so hasty, and so forth — we are sure that we our- 
selves should have profited by it. We see his 
slips very clearly, we who are at a distance; but 
if we were ourselves in the thick of it, would we 
be so free as we think? From the outside it is 
easy to formulate these *ifs,' it is only when you 
yourself are implicated in the matter that you 
come to believe that the outcome was inevitable. 
It may be that if I were to learn the circumstances 
which I am about to relate as you will — in a disin- 
terested way that is — the affair might appear to 
me in a different light. But I was involved in the 
thing and know exactly how it came about, and I 
tell you that I firmly believe that this boy, with 
the mentality — the personality if you like, Mr. 



A CASE IN POINT 45 

Fraser — that was his (he had all the impulsive- 
ness, the strongly emotional nature of his race), 
could not have acted in any other way than he did. 
And so, in this instance at least, I must believe in 
fatalism; for with his character on one hand and 
a particular combination of circumstance on the 
other, I cannot see how he could be considered 
a free agent, and whether you believe this combin- 
ation of circumstance to have been Destiny or 
merely the result of accident, to my mind, in no 
way affects this conclusion; in either case he was 
not free. But I will give you the story and leave 
you to form your own opinion." 

We settled ourselves more comfortably in our 
chairs. The Professor and I gave our pipes a 
fresh load and Fraser bit the end off a cigar. The 
Doctor lay back in his corner the while, pensively 
pulling his beard. Just as he was commencing to 
speak once more we were startled by a long blast 
of the ship's siren. Stepping out on deck I found 
that we had run into a thick fog. As soon as I 
had returned to my seat and told them of the 
change in the weather the Doctor began his story, 
and as he was telling it, at regular intervals, the 
melancholy hoot of the fog-whistle came rumbling 
in from outside. 

"There is a little mountain lake in the Car- 
pathians which is a real gem for beauty. I doubt 
if even you, Mr. Fraser — traveller that you are 



46 MOTLEY 

— have ever so much as heard of it. It is not fa- 
mous; its charm is not of the starthng kind, and 
I should never have heard of it myself had it not 
been described to me once by an Hungarian friend 
as just the place to go to when you were worn out 
and wished to get completely away from the 
world, in order to rest body and mind through 
the peaceful contemplation of a scene of perfect 
loveliness unadorned. I remembered this friend's 
enthusiastic advice, and so it happened that sev- 
eral years later — and this is about five summers 
ago now — when I was badly in need of a few 
weeks of absolute quiet, I journeyed out to Tran- 
sylvania, looked the place up and settled down in 
the delightful little inn at the foot of the lake. 
"There were not many stopping at the inn; 
such visitors as there were — nearly all Hungar- 
ians and Rumanians — stayed but a few days and 
then moved on, doubtless in search of some place 
where their vivacious natures might be better 
served by a little more activity. As for me, I 
watched them come and go with indifference. 
That little sheet of water with its wooded banks 
was something to dream about; my friend had 
given it no more than its due, and every day that 
I rowed about on its waters or strolled around its 
rocky margin carried deeper within me the repose 
which I sought. I recall several writers — your 
Thoreau among others, Mr. Fraser, — who have 



A CASE IN POINT 47 

spoken of the lake as Nature's master-work, and 
I am not at all sure that they are not right. 

"I had been there for a week or ten days, I 
suppose, when a boy and girl arrived — honey- 
mooning. They were as charming a pair as I 
have ever seen, good to look upon and in every 
way delightful as only, I think, an Irish bridal 
couple can be. They were both from Dublin ; the 
lad was connected with our embassy in Vienna, 
and someone there having told him of this out- 
of-the-way nook, he had taken his bride of a fort- 
night back to the Continent in time to give them 
ten days there before they would have to return to 
his post — and the World. I am not of a very 
sentimental sort, I think, but in the few hours 
when I had this boy and girl to look at and oc- 
casionally to exchange a word with, they came to 
mean quite as much to me as the glittering lake 
and the nodding trees. As I stood on the terrace 
in front of the hotel, upon the morning after their 
arrival, watching the play of sunlight on the ruf- 
fled water and the drifting clouds overhead, I 
thought that nothing could be more beautiful, but 
the sound of a woman's laugh caused me to turn 
my head; they were walking together — the boy 
and the girl — across the grass toward the lake- 
side, and as I looked at them the world grew 
brighter and lovelier still." 

The Doctor paused, interrupted by a blast of 



48 MOTLEY 

the siren — louder and more dismally long than 
usual. There was something uncanny about the 
rise and fall of its raucous voice. He took a sip 
from his glass and resumed: 

"I must not go on in this vein or you will be 
calling me a sentimental old fool for all my pro- 
testation to the contrary, but to tell the truth they 
went right 'to the heart of me' as chey would be 
saying in their native land. Their youth, their 
beauty and their light-heartedness — it was all 
very winning; at least it won me, crusty old bach- 
elor that I am! And it was the way they loved 
too — not a vestige of mawkishness about it, you 
know . . . nothing of your German honey- 
moon style ; but you could see it in their eyes and 
hear it in their voices. They adored one another's 
shadows ! 

''One evening I was seated down by the lake- 
side, watching the sunset lights, on sky and water. 
They stood and chatted with me for a moment 
and then wandered on to the little pier where the 
rowboats were moored. The golden mirror of 
the lake was shattered as their boat drew away 
from the shore, but I bore them no ill-will for that 
— to my mind their little craft with its dark fig- 
ure at the oars and white form at the tiller-ropes 
merely completed the picture — enhanced it. The 
boy called out to me and the girl waved a ravish- 
ing white arm; I shouted and waved back, then 



A CASE IN POINT 49 

sat and watched them. Upon my word — I think 
I was almost as happy as they were ! 

"As I looked out across the water I noticed a 
little patch of ripples scudding after them, and I 
felt on my cheek the breath of a faint sun-set 
breeze. I experienced an unaccountable interest 
in that flying patch of ruffled surface and followed 
it with my eye as it silently and swiftly bore down 
upon them — I say unaccountable because It was 
but the dying breath of a breeze such as could 
scarcely have endangered a boy's cockle boat. In 
an instant it had overtaken them. Just as the first 
ripples were lapping their rudder, a light, filmy 
scarf which the girl had worn carelessly tossed 
over her shoulders was lifted from them and 
blown off into the water at her side. With a little 
cry of dismay she half arose from the seat and 
leaning out reached for It — in a flash they were 
over. For a moment I sat stupefied. I could 
scarcely realize what had happened, It had come 
so quickly; but recovering my senses, I started on 
the run for the boat-landing. All the while I kept 
my eyes fixed on the spot where the boat floated, 
filled — with only an inch or two of the gunwale 
showing; the spot fascinated me and I could not 
look away for more than an instant at a time — 
just long enough to let me see where I was going. 
For a moment (an age it seemed to me) there 
was nothing to be seen but the black rim of the 



50 MOTLEY 

boat and the white ring of foamy water where 
they had gone under, then the boy's head appear- 
ed, and as he shook the water from his eyes and 
looked wildly about him there came a gleam of 
white a few feet away. He struck out, grasping 
it just as it was disappearing again; and then I 
saw the girl pinion him madly in her frantic strug- 
gles. He tried to disengage himself, but she had 
her arms wrapped around his neck and they both 
went under together. Sick at heart I ran on 
toward the landing — I was almost there now. 
They reappeared with him holding her at arm's 
length ; but her blind struggles continued, she got 
one arm over his shoulder, and then — I saw him 
strike her again and again in the face with his 
fist. I heard her shriek. The blood froze in my 
veins; Good God, could it be possible! I had 
reached the landing by this time and stood there 
transfixed with horror, gazing at that fiend of a 
man there in the water. Had he stopped at last ? 
Yes, and she lay still in his arm with her head 
fallen inert on his shoulder. He saw me and call- 
ed to me faintly, hoarsely; I started from my 
lethargy, and suddenly it dawned upon me that he 
was no fiend after all, but had merely kept a cool 
head and had done the only thing that could be 
done to save her. I leaped into a boat and pulled 
at the oars with every ounce that was in me, I 
have never rowed on the Thames as I rowed then. 



A CASE IN POINT 51 

When I reached them I found him clinging to the 
gunwale of the submerged boat with one hand, 
while with the other he was endeavouring to keep 
the girl's chin above water. But he was almost 
done. 

*'With some difficulty I got the lifeless body of 
the girl over the stern, and then pulled the boy 
over after her. As I looked on that chalk-white 
face all bruised and bleeding, and thought of how 
bonnie it had been when she passed by me but 
a moment before, I was seized by a fit of angry 
indignation, though I realized full well that the 
lad only did the right thing. 

"Some of the hotel people had seen what had 
occurred and were awaiting us at the landing. 
They carried the girl to the house, while I fol- 
lowed behind, steadying the tottering boy. There 
was nothing the matter with him beyond complete 
exhaustion, so I sent him to his bed and told him 
to stay there, promising to come for him and take 
him to his wife as soon as I should have restored 
her to consciousness. We carried the girl to a 
room nearby, and I set to work; I got a little 
water out of her lungs, but it was evident that 
she was suffering more from her stunning and 
shock than from partial drowning. 

"I had worked over her for about an hour and 
a half when she opened her eyes — but they were 
delirious eyes, and a moment later she began to 



52 MOTLEY 

struggle and rave. The proprietor of the hotel 
was assisting me, and we held her without great 
difficulty — she was just a slip of a girl. But her 
wild cries were heart-rending — she thought we 
were killing her and screamed madly for help : 
Jack had tried to kill her too ... he had 
struck her . . . everybody wanted to kill 
her . . . yes, everybody . . . but why? 
She wailed again and again Why?' . . . what 
had she done? Her cries were agonizing; tears 
stood in the landlord's eyes merely to see and 
hear her, he could not understand a word that she 
uttered. At times she would rave incoherently, 
but always she would return to her terrified 
query: why were we, why was Jack trying to 
kill her? 

"She had continued to scream and struggle 
faintly for hours in spite of all my efforts to quiet 
her and I was beginning at last to become alarm- 
ed by the undue duration of her delirium and the 
increasing gravity of the character of her halluc- 
inations when, in the midst of an unusually severe 
attack, I heard the door open and close. I was 
too busily engaged to look around for a moment 
or two, when I did, to my horror I saw the boy 
standing in the room, his face as white as death. 
I sprang to my feet and went toward him, begging 
him to go at once, scolding him for coming against 
my orders and reassuring him — all in a breath. 



A CASE IN POINT 53 

It was but a temporary thing, I told him, quite 
natural under the circumstances, and would surely 
pass off in a short while. But my face must 
have belied me, he must have seen the fear in my 
eyes. His lip quivered slightly: *You are lying 
to me, Doctor,' he half whispered, 'I have been 
in there on my bed for hours hstening to her cries 
'till I couldn't stand it any longer — for hours I 
tell you. No, it won't pass off . . . Oh my 
God, she's mad . . . mad!' Before I could 
prevent it he had slipped around me to the bed- 
side. 

"Gentlemen, my heart has been torn more than 
once; a medical man, I think, lives in a world of 
particularly poignant grief and scarcely a day 
passes but he witnesses sorrows too deep for 
tears, but I assure you that never in my life — be- 
fore or since — have I felt greater pain than I did 
in the moment that followed. As he lean- 
ed over the bed and spoke to her, calling 
her by name, she shrank from him; then, scream- 
ing like a fury, she flew at his head, beating and 
tearing his face with her hands, fighting him back 
until she fell to the floor by the bed-side, where 
she lay writhing and screaming that he had come 
to kill her ... he had tried to before and 
would do it this time. . . . 'Oh, take him 
away — keep him from me,' she moaned. I sprang 
for her and lifted her to the bed; she lay there 



54 MOTLEY 

sobbing. I turned toward the boy — I cannot de- 
scribe the look of grisly horror on his bleeding 
face — I do not like to think of it. 

" 'She believes that I tried to kill her, that I 
fought her off — Good God! you know that I did 
it to save her — you do, don't you ?' 

" 'Of course I do,' I said to him, taking him 
by the arm and leading him to the door, 'and so 
will she if you will only give her a chance to re- 
cover from her shock. You must go at once, go 
to your room and stay there until I come to you 
with the good news,' I held the door open for 
him. 

" 'Good news? So it's good news that's to 
be coming to me is it?' and he laughed. The hard 
note in his mocking laugh and the set expression 
of his face disquieted me, so I kept my eyes on 
him until I saw him enter his room and close the 
door. 

"The girl had exhausted such strength as re- 
mained to her in this last paroxysm and lay pant- 
ing and trembling, still crying out from time to 
time — but ever more feebly, until at last she ceas- 
ed altogether and lay quiet but for an occasional 
low groan. After a time even this stopped, and 
she slept. 

"Our poor landlord, who ever since the disas- 
trous arrival of the husband had sat dazed and 
terrified only half understanding what had trans- 



A CASE IN POINT 55 

pired, looked by this time almost ready to drop, 
and as I anticipated no further need for his as- 
sistance I told him that all would now be well 
and that he might go and get a little sleep while 
I remained and watched. He did not want to 
go at first but I induced him to do so at last. Poor 
fellow, he was hard hit by what we had been 
through; he was under the impression that she 
had not recognized her husband, and I did not 
see fit at the moment to tell him otherwise. Toor 
girl, poor girl!' he said as he shook his head sadly 
and turned toward the door. As I sat there alone 
by the bed-side, watching by the dim light of the 
oil lamp (turned low since the girl had fallen 
asleep), I felt hope rise higher and higher within 
me ; for her respiration and pulse grew quiet and 
even, and a look of peace had gradually crept 
over the sleeping face; livid and bruised as it 
was, in it I could recognize 6nce again the blythe 
little lady I had known before. Fatigue at last 
got the better of me, and sometime in the early 
morning I too fell asleep. 

When I awakened, the sun was shining in at 
the window and the birds were singing in the 
trees. I leaned over the bed and looked at the 
sleeping girl. She stirred under my gaze, then 
the eyelids quivered and opened, her blue eyes 
looked up into mine, questioningly for an instant, 
and then she smiled. And I thanked God in my 
heait, for it was the old smile — her smile. 



56 MOTLEY 

*'I left the room without speaking and walked 
down the hall to fetch the boy. She was his once 
more, *nd I well knew that the sight of him would 
do more for her now than all the doctoring in the 
world. I trod on air as I went, so eager was 1 
to break the good news to the poor laddie. With- 
out stopping to knock I pushed open the unlocked 
door and stepped inside — the room was empty. 

*'We found him a short time after, down 
among the trees by the lake-side — shot through 
the mouth. He had been dead for hours. The 
girl has always believed that he was drowned — 
I was able to manage matters so that she should: 
she remembered nothing after going down the 
first time, and thought that he gave his life in 
saving her. Isn't it better so ? 

"We buried him there, among the trees by the 
lake; and on the little granite headstone, belov/ 
his name, she painted in black letters: He Died 
for Me. And true enough; he did." 

As we opened the door and stepped out into 
the night we were met by the mournful voice of 
the fog-horn, and the mist felt bitterly cold. I 
stopped a moment outside the companion-way ; the 
sound of the ship's bell came aft to me — and then 
the plaintive cry of the lookout: "Eight . . . 
bells . . . and . . . all's . . . well." 



